Hardcover, 288 pages
English language
Published March 25, 2008 by Random House.
At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in the world at large, but she doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance; a former student who has lost the will to live; Olive’s own adult child, who feels tyrannized by her irrational sensitivities; and her husband, Henry, who finds his loyalty to his marriage both a blessing and a curse.
As the townspeople grapple with their problems, mild and dire, Olive is brought to a deeper understanding of herself and her life–sometimes painfully, but always with ruthless honesty. Olive Kitteridge offers profound insights into the human condition–its conflicts, its tragedies and joys, and the endurance it requires.
I started trying to read this novel in December (23) but it defeats me. Perhaps it is declining RAM in my brain, but it seems to me that pointillism was fine for Seurat but as a writing technique it requires keeping too many balls in the air. I fell off the horse when Strout invented a new tree species.
I could not tolerate the negativism and depressing nature of the four short stories I managed to read (slog through). There are better books for me... I place this book among those I recommend as "best to avoid" unless you enjoy being depressed; then it's probably wonderful.
People tell me they find this book depressing. At best, they condemn it as too realistic as if the function of literature should be to distract us from such things. Even I found the beginning difficult because Olive seemed to not give her kind husband Henry a break, but Henry is kind effortlessly. He would certainly find this book depressing. Olive doesn't have the choice to make an effort to be more like Henry. She has as little insight into who she is as Henry until the book's end. No one in the book really does and thus they suffer when they realize that life doesn't really work out the way they've been told. When they notice, they become surprised, then angry, then depressed and think it's just them. Maybe that's what people mean by "too realistic" but this refusal to see the conventional as desirable is why I like …
People tell me they find this book depressing. At best, they condemn it as too realistic as if the function of literature should be to distract us from such things. Even I found the beginning difficult because Olive seemed to not give her kind husband Henry a break, but Henry is kind effortlessly. He would certainly find this book depressing. Olive doesn't have the choice to make an effort to be more like Henry. She has as little insight into who she is as Henry until the book's end. No one in the book really does and thus they suffer when they realize that life doesn't really work out the way they've been told. When they notice, they become surprised, then angry, then depressed and think it's just them. Maybe that's what people mean by "too realistic" but this refusal to see the conventional as desirable is why I like this book so much and had to immediately start the sequel [b:Olive, Again|43984883|Olive, Again|Elizabeth Strout|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1576676858l/43984883.SY75.jpg|66502791] as soon as I finished.
Bin sehr langsam reingekommen; überfordert von immer neuen Charakteren um die Hauptperson herum. Aber irgendwann ist der Plot dann geflossen und ich mag die Geschichten sehr, die kleinen wie die großen.
Es nervt schon die zwei, drei Male, wo sie ihre Charaktere offen rassistisch sein und dies so stehen lässt ...
I did not think I could love a book about old white people at their end of days in small-town Maine as much as I did this one, and it helps me understand (if not forgive) why so many of them are Trump voters, notwithstanding that the titular character here considers Republicans (in the GW Bush era) to be idiots.
3.5 stars, and tough to rate. I think I would have preferred this if there were less stories in which Olive and her family aren't the central characters. I had a hard time motivating myself to keep reading when I knew the next story wasn't about Olive.
Olive is a difficult, conflicting, captivating character; I didn't like her at all, but I was sad for her, and occasionally happy for her, and I maybe loved her. It felt very strange and awful and wonderful to be inside her head.
I really enjoyed the stories in this book. Sometime I don't go for a novel that is really short stories that are related (similar to Cloud Atlas). But these stories really seemed to flow together to tell the larger story. Quite bittersweet, almost sad, the human condition. I think we'll all run into an Olive Kitteridge at some point in our lives.
Het verbaast mij dat dit boek (nog) niet vertaald is in het Nederlands. Een pulitzer prijs winnaar nog wel. En meer dan de moeite waard.
Edit: Wel vertaald! (Dank Birgit) onder de naam "winter"
This book got mixed reviews, with some of us loving it and others wondering how the hell it could get a Pulitzer. The structure of the book was a bit startling - a series of short stories, all of which at least mentioned Olive Kitteridge. But this allowed you to see Olive from a number of different viewpoints. Each of the stories could stand on its own, with its main character often coming to a crisis point and making a life-changing decision. Olive, on the other hand, grew and changed at a glacial pace. But at least she did, in the end.
I enjoyed these interwoven stories very much, and thought it a brilliant way to portray a complicated character in the context of her surroundings, family, and acquaintances.
This is a series of connected short stories all involving people, places, and events in Olive Kitteridge's life. Even though Olive is on the surface a fairly unlikeable character (her temper changes on a dime and blunt doesn't come close to describing some of her behavior), one can't help wanting to jump to her defense when other characters disparage her. This was a very quick read, but beautifully written. I couldn't put it down.
This was handed to me back in May, with a 'it is so good--you gotta read it' and the description that it was rather depressing. No surprise that I didn't actually start reading it until late September.
It is good, and I did enjoy it. It does qualify as somewhat depressing, as mortality figures into the arc of the book. It is a series of intertwined short stories, all set in the same small town. In the beginning, Olive is probably in her mid thirties. At the end, she's a widowed old woman. She's central to some of the stories, but hardly present in others. You meet men and women, old and young, at all sorts of different points in their lives. It made me think of 'Spoon River Anthology,' but it has been so many years since I read those poems, that this comparison is probably highly inaccurate.
I heard Olive Kitteridge reviewed on NPR a few weeks ago and put in my library request right away because it really sounded like my kind of book. I was not disappointed! Every story is a little jewel, beautifully written and sparse of detail but sketching a vivid picture of the life of each character, and linked together by the marvelously three-dimensional Olive. Lovely.
